Dust Their Wages
by What Ithacas Mean
Summary: "Dust's your wages, son of sorrow / But men may come to worse than dust."  A.E. Housman.  Twenty-six years after DA:O, the taint has its final revenge.    But life goes on.
1. Dust Their Wages

**Title: "Dust Their Wages"**

Standard disclaimers, as always. Title adapted from the A.E. Housman poem "Shot? So quick, so clean an ending?" (_A Shropshire Lad, _XLIV.)

_This is set over twenty years after Origins and Amaranthine, and - fair warning - all our heroes are either dead or dying. And it is time for the Warden-Commander of Ferelden to go to her Calling.  
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**"Dust Their Wages"**

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_My dear heart_, the Warden-Commander of Ferelden writes.

And stops, staring down at the brown goose-feathered quill between her scarred, ink-blotted knuckles. The scraped parchment, thin and fine. Outside the window of her musty study, seagulls dive and keen in the wind from the sea that smells of salt and freedom and further shores, and her throat tightens in grief.

There are no words for what she wants to say. It is the silent scream of a trapped and dying god twisting beneath her breastbone like poisoned knives. It is the burning coldness of the taint racing in her veins hotter and faster by the day, a twisted knot of pain and compulsion. It is the crushing weight of twenty-five years of recruiting young men and women for bad compromises and bitter duty and loss of every good friend bar the last.

Alistair Theirin is dead, fallen from his horse three weeks before his eldest daughter's nineteenth birthday. Rowen Theirin is queen in Ferelden now, young and golden and painfully like her father to the eye. Wynne is dead much longer, so much longer that her features are like mist in the memory. Zevran Arainai is lost to the Crows in Antiva: she had word of his death a month after Alistair's, though he had been dead a year longer, a twin to the first blow that fell like a hammer on the bloody anvil of her soul. Nathaniel Howe, dead of a cave-in in the Deep Roads beside Oghren in the plague-ridden spring of 9:44 Dragon, a year that carried off Anders as well despite all they could do, and Sigrun gone early to Orzammar and the taint's final revenge.

And now the last loss, and the most painful. Twenty-six years of love and comradeship and the Commander of the Grey in Ferelden will go to Orzammar alone and unaccompanied, leaving only a letter in her wake.

_I hope you will forgive me for this, dear Leliana. But you have said too often since Alistair's death that you will not let me go to Orzammar alone for me to disbelieve you, and if you demanded it to my face I could not leave you behind._

_It is your right to choose, you might say. I have been your friend for years and honoured thereby; your lover, almost as long, and by your regard doubly blessed. You would come because you cannot bear that anyone should go into that darkness to die alone. And perhaps because you believe in miracles._

_It is a fate I do not welcome, death. Still less in the Deep Roads. But I had one miracle more than I dared hope for in surviving the Blight, and more blessing than I ever deserved in your company through these long years. They were good years, I hope. I look back on them now and weep for the joys that lived between - alongside! - our struggles. A happy weeping, dear bard: I would not trade those years for anything on the face of this earth._

_Do not come with me into the dark, I beg. Live on in the light and remember. We are yet young, and for you, I hope - I pray, Leliana, and well you know how long it is since I prayed in earnest - there are more good years and joys to come._

_I do not reckon it beyond your abilities to follow me to Orzammar. Indeed, I account it entirely possible I may arrive and find you there before me, for I will dispatch this letter to you in Denerim before I leave, and though I make all speed, I know your determination as well as I know my own. I may be a coward at heart, dear bard. I am tired of making bitter choices. I pray you, forgive me. Forgive me, and say me farewell._

_I will love you unto the bitter end._

_Yours, while light and life remain,_

_Your Warden._

#

#

In the royal study in Denerim, the blood-orange glow of sunset lances through tall windows, illuminating the parchment in red where it lies on a broad, cluttered desk. The two women present exchange near-identical glances.

"It's lucky you anticipated this." The younger woman blows a strand of fair hair out of her eyes and leans her palms against the desk. The shoulders that flex under her fine white silk shirt have the powerful breadth that comes of exercise with sword and shield. She is a little older, perhaps, than twenty, but her brown eyes are those of someone used to hard choices. As they should be: the Queen of Ferelden has grown up hard in the two years since her father's death, and it shows.

The elder woman shrugs expressively. She is more than twice the young queen's age, but slender yet, the long braid of her red-gold hair liberally streaked with grey. The crows-feet that crinkle the corners of her faded blue-green eyes are the kind that come with laughter and exposure to all kinds of weather, and a pale white scar the length of her jaw pulls the corner of her mouth up into a permanent half-smile. "I have known the Warden Commander a very long time, Your Majesty," she says, the edges of her speech softened by the faint traces of an Orlesian accent. "A very long time, as these things go, and I have not seen her dreams so troubled since the Blight." Her voice is half amusement, and all sorrow. "She has never been good at lying to me. I knew, when I left Vigil's Keep. I knew."

"Please don't 'Your Majesty' me in private, Aunt Leli," Rowen Theirin says quietly. "For my father's sake if not my own, I believe King Bhelen will do as he has pledged and delay the Commander of the Grey as long as he can. But you will need to travel quickly."

"I have a good horse."

"No," the queen says to Ferelden's most famous bard and one of the last of its great heroes still living. "No," Alistair's daughter says to her adoptive aunt. "You have a writ from the Queen of Ferelden to use the royal post. And if the post should fail, to commandeer what mounts you please."

"I would not have asked for that," Leliana says, her words soft with gratitude.

"I know." Rowen's lips do something painful and complicated. "But Father -" She shakes her head. "He told me about his promise. And Ferelden owes you - both of you - more than this." Her eyes are dark and searching: Ferelden's queen holds the woman in front of her in the affection of family. "Leliana, are you sure you wish to do this?"

"I cannot do otherwise," Leliana says simply, and does not flinch when the queen grasps her hands between her own with fierce and desperate pressure.

"Then may Andraste guide your steps," Rowen Theirin says, after a long moment, and if there is grief in her voice no one will ever mention it. "And the Maker light your way."

#

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Orzammar is much changed from the Warden-Commander's first visit. She has returned twice in the intervening years, and found the creep of the taint in the rock calling to her blood with oppressive insistence: ancient stone beneath the mountain and the bustle of a city learning to look outward a bare distraction from the humming in her veins.

The king himself greets her in the Hall of Heroes. Bhelen Aeducan, his eldest son and second a younger mirror at his shoulder. He has survived civil war and political upheaval and more assassination attempts than any mortal should, and even now she cannot bring herself to like him. She respects him still, and for the sake of the order she responds politely to his speech of welcome. For the sake of the Grey Wardens - for the sake of her duty, which in twenty-six years she has never once laid aside - she sits through three days of feasting and fighting in her honour and the honour of the order; writes letters of recommendation to Vigil's Keep on behalf of the young men and women who approach her to join the Wardens (one, she instructs, is to be turned away: even on short acquaintance she can tell that if he survived the Joining he'd be a disaster waiting to happen, but two others she recommends should be nudged towards leadership positions, if they live); and inspects the two Grey Wardens who make up the order's permanent detachment at the Aeducan court.

There is an order to all things. Even dying. And despite the gnawing buzz in her veins, she will not go until all the proprieties have been observed.

Even now, she will not fail in her duty.

#

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It is the morning of the fourth day, inasmuch as dwarves measure morning, when the Commander of the Grey arms herself for the final time. Dragonscale hauberk, greaves, boots, helm, gauntlets: a familiar weight of leather and metal, settling on her shoulders like a second skin. Her sword at her hip. Her shield on her back. A dagger in each boot.

She pauses. Takes a twist of powder from her beltpouch and swallows it dry: she has learned something of poisons over the years. This one is slow-acting: she has a week, now, before her heart will stop. Four days until she is too weak to move. She does not expect to live that long, but if she does - well, the 'spawn will make no broodmothers from her.

She will make sure of that.

#

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Leliana finds her at the gate to the Deep Roads.

"I told you not to come," the Warden-Commander of Ferelden says, and her glance is bleak.

"I know." The former Orlesian bard is armed and armoured. Eight Dead Legionnaires stand at her back. Her expression is somewhere between grieving and grim, but there is forgiveness in her eyes. "Did you think I would let you go without saying goodbye?"

#

#

There are duties and duties, and this is Leliana's.

To stand and say _farewell _and _I love you_ and Maker help her, _die well_ without breaking: to kiss her Warden's cheek and clasp her hand and send her for the last time into the dark. Send her into the dark, and stand and not follow though her soul aches to go.

It has been a good life. And she will honour her Warden's wish, and not leave it yet.

And when her Warden disappears into the darkness of the tunnel with the Dead Legionaires, when Leliana's heart breaks in her chest - not for the first time, but now, perhaps, for the last - and the tears she cannot yet shed burn in her eyes -

Then, and only then, does she turn away.

_Atrasta nal tunsha, my Warden. May we find our way again, after the dark._


	2. Coda

**"Dust Their Wages: Coda"**

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_Turn safe to rest, no dreams, no waking;_  
_ And here, man, here's the wreath I've made:_  
_'Tis not a gift that's worth the taking,_  
_ But wear it and it will not fade._

- A.E. Housman, "Shot? So quick, so clean an ending?" (_A Shropshire Lad, _XLIV.)

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There are moments, just beneath the surface of wakefulness, when Leliana forgets that Aud is dead.

Moments before empty space beside her in the cold morning air recalls the truth, and the knife of grief twists a little tighter in her throat.

It is a month's hard road between Orzammar and Denerim: harder yet with winter chasing autumn down from the mountain passes, and everything on that road reminds her of Aud. The grief is still fresh, still cuttingly sharp. Once, the Grey Warden crest on the underside of her saddlecloth catches her breath in a spasm of weeping, and every new turn of the path reveals sights she will never again share with her lover. She's had grief enough to know that time will wear the razor edges down, blunt the jagged ache of loss to some more bearable hollow absence. Eventually, even the Warden's scarred features will blur in her memory, leaving only faded impressions - a warm touch, the scent of granite and thunderstorms, a fierce, flashing grin.

She would be angry, were there anyone left to be angry _with._ It is cruel, unjust, too much to bear. But life is - has always been - one unfairness after another, and she is too old by decades to rage and scream at the sky. She has had good years, long ones, with few enough regrets. She will trust the Maker and continue on, though - dear Maker - it might be the hardest thing she has ever done.

For now it's all she can bear to be alone with her grief, to come to terms with living with a loss more grievous than any amputated limb, and it is with snow at her back and cold rain in her face she makes her solitary way down into the Bannorn.


	3. What Blood Remained These Wounds

**Dust Their Wages: What Blood Remained These Wounds**

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_Carry my crying spirit till it's weaned  
To do without what blood remained these wounds._

(from Wilfred Owen, _A Terre_)

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_Onset:_

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Her father's desk is cluttered with maps and reports. Two years after his death, Rowan Theirin still thinks of it that way, _Father's desk. Father's study_. Even, sometimes, _Father's kingdom._

_Father's Warden-Commander_, certainly.

Who is _also_ dead. Or as good as, by now.

Chill winter light slants through the high windows, illuminating Ser Alban of Hildfell's straw-blond head. An Anders, and a Weisshaupt man: at his hip the fingers of his left hand keep twitching towards where a sword would have hung, as though unconsciously seeking reassurance. It's giving her bodyguard - a elf in Theirin colours, stationed discretely just inside the door - a nervous tic.

They had to _sodding_ well go and die and leave her here, facing the Warden-Commander of Vigil's Keep across the parchment-cluttered span of _her _royal desk in _her _royal study, with a royal bloody mess in _her _kingdom.

_Temper won't help_, she reminds herself, and leans her palms on the smooth wood between the papers deliberately slow, holding the knight's gaze. "This is not the Anderfels, Ser Alban," she says, quietly. "You will explain why you felt it necessary to conscript the fifteen-year-old son of one of my banns with neither Blight nor shortage of manpower to compel you. You will do so clearly and you will do so _now. _And you may account yourself fortunate that the boy survived the Joining, for if he had _not_, ser, I would this moment be trying you for murder on the floor of the Landsmeet."

"The Joining is supposed to be a secret of the Order," Alban says, stiffly. _Maker, he's young._ Rowan had thought Weisshaupt would send someone a little older, a little more practiced in treachery, not someone barely ten years her elder and green as spring barley where it came to politics.

_Or promoted the Warden who was Aud's second these last years._ But Sion Cafels is a mage and a Fereldan, and - Maker be praised - her loyalties don't lie in the Anderfels _or _in Orlais.

_Or in Seheron._

"And my subjects in Amaranthine are _supposed_ to be under your protection." Rowan shows her teeth. The charitably-inclined might call the expression a smile. "The Wardens hold the arling by my father's gift. The last Warden-Commander was arlessa by courtesy, and as a token of Ferelden's gratitude. Do not be misled into thinking that gift cannot be revoked."

One hundred and nineteen Wardens, at the last muster. Nearly five hundred in the Silver Guard and assorted auxiliaries, who will _probably_ follow Ser Alban if it comes to a struggle between the Order and the Crown. The loyalties of Amaranthine's militia and levies are less certain, but whichever way they chose, it will be messy if she has to press the case.

Messier yet, if she has to do it _fast_, to stop a second front opening up behind her.

_It's all well and good when a private army of some of the hardest fighting soldiers on the face of Thedas are led by someone you _trust_, Dad_, she thinks, not without irony and not for the first time. _But when they have one of our wealthiest arlings and an impregnable fortress_, _trust is something I can't afford. _

"Your Majesty." Alban does not give ground easily. Rowan could like that in him, if he were someone she could trust. _And not Weisshaupt's through and through_. "I understood I was within my rights to recruit at will. If I have misjudged, I beg pardon, but if Bann Ulfgyfa did not tell you her son was willing, then she failed to tell the whole truth. According to Warden Sion, he ran away to the Order at the Vigil twice before in the last two years. He seems a likely lad, and I invoked Conscription to prevent his mother carrying him bodily home."

Rowan nods. "You are within your rights to recruit, Ser Alban. But where you conscript - and most especially in Amaranthine - I will expect a full accounting of your reasons." She allows her lips to curve, a more genuine smile. "Maker knows, I'd join the Wardens to get away from Ulfgyfa if I were any child of hers, but when less than two in three survive the Joining - don't twitch like that, Commander, my father _was _a Warden as well as a king and I could hardly help overhearing his conversations with your predecessor - I will have no one condemned to death without cause."

"Majesty," he murmurs, and inclines his head.

#

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Rowan claims his escort to her public audiences through the tapestried halls of the palace. They talk of the grain trade and the price of oil in Antiva, and she invites his presence at an evening salon before he makes his bow, lower than protocol strictly requires.

Behind his retreating back, over the lowered heads of the Rivaini ambassadors, she meets her chancellor's eyes, and the eyes of the dowager queen, and sees foreboding written there like banners.

She will have send someone to Vigil's Keep. She will need Warden-Commander Alban's measure, and quickly.

If she's very lucky, what's coming is only a war.


End file.
